Radioactive waste in Asse II
What has been stored in the mine and where does it come from?
- Date
- 23/12/2009
Between 1967 and 1978, 125,787 drums and waste packages containing low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste were emplaced in Asse II (124,494 drums with low-level and 1,293 drums with intermediate-level radioactive waste). The low-level radioactive waste is stored in twelve chambers in a depth of 750 m, the intermediate-level radioactive waste in a chamber on the 511-m level.
The waste originates from the operation, decommissioning, and dismantling of nuclear facilities and, to a small extent, from the application of radioactive substances in research, industry, and medicine. Typical waste consists of filters, scrap, liquids, slugs, or mixed waste.
Where the Radioactive Waste in Asse II Comes from
The by far largest part of the circa 45,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste originates from the facilities of today’s nuclear power plant operators Eon, Vattenfall Europe, RWE, and EnBW. At the beginning of 2008 the total activity amounted to approximately 2,700,000 gigabecquerel (1 gigabecquerel equals 1 billion becquerel).
With the help of documents one can approximately reconstruct how many drums were delivered to Asse between 1967 and 1978 that came from the nuclear power plants but also from other installations such as medical-biological laboratories or the Federal Armed Forces.
Apart from direct delivery to Asse II, large amounts of radioactive waste also came from nuclear power plants via the Karlsruhe Research Center. The local reprocessing plant which served as a pilot plant for the planned commercial Wackersdorf reprocessing plant accepted spent fuel elements from the German nuclear power plants. If one combines the direct and indirect way, this would result in approximately 86 % of the delivered activity and approximately 67 % of all drums in Asse II originating from the facilities of today’s nuclear power plant operators. However, it is not possible to allocate today’s radioactive inventory to a certain deliverer, since different radionuclides decay in different times.
